Media and film studies

Film and Revolution

Module code: P4100A
Level 6
30 credits in spring semester
Teaching method: Seminar, Film
Assessment modes: Coursework

This module explores the connection between revolutions and the development of film language. You’ll study radical and revolutionary film movements throughout history and focus on modern revolutionary expression, particularly from 2011 onwards in the Middle East and North Africa. Films and movements will be examined through the lenses of aesthetics, ideology, politics, and history.

Questions we’ll explore include:

• what makes a film revolutionary?
• how can filmmakers capture the many sides of revolution?
• are films about revolution always revolutionary themselves?

You’ll analyse films that emerged from key historical movements, learning about history through film and film through history. Past films studied include:

• Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy, 1966)
• October (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1928)
• Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, USA, 1983)
• Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Cuba, 1968)
• Out on the Street (Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, Egypt, 2015)

 

Module learning outcomes

• Identify and deploy critical discourses relevant to the study of film and revolution including Soviet film theory, Third Cinema, and philosophy of politics and aesthetics.
• Analyse films of and aboutrevolution in ways attentive to their forms and contexts.
• Work effectively independently and collaboratively.
• Apply the critical approaches encountered in the module to original case study work.